Matryoshka
by SeungSeiRan
Summary: One waits for the other to complete her. Ulquiorra x Orihime.


Disclaimer: Bleach and its respective characters are property of Kubo Tite.

* * *

It rains and it pours and you have no reason to dance, dance, dance the nightwishes away like you used to do when your feet were a pair of wings that skimmed over broken beer-bottle glass and egg whites on the kitchen floor. Now that your room's never been cleaner and the sky ever so heavier, you're standing at the door with no reason to rejoice for more. It rains and it pours and you wish that you could run, run, run down through your thoughts, thick like sour cream in the dark of your mind.

Imagination's never served you better than now, in school when you're leaning against brick walls that hold up beneath the weight of your patched-up body, Patchwork Soul, Ribbon-bound Heart and you stifle the sigh in case it dissolves to ash in one breath and carries out to the noon wind because he'll hear you now. One breath, one in, another out, you're back at it again, recreating the façade so well that you're a caricature of what you're supposed to be, leaking lukewarm psychedelia lies that clash well with the warmth of your eyes and hair. Now you're running about with your friends and not alone, but lonelier than before halcyon days when you only had solace in a bird-cage solarium of your own imagining.

So when you lean back and taste the rain on your tongue, cold and slippery sweet down your throat, you're glad to give in to the specter before you, a funereal friend swathed in white with glass for eyes, shining green like the beer bottles shredding your childish footsteps in your memories. You pretend you kiss him, cry when he can't kiss back, then serve penance for allowing that dangerous mind of yours to wander to forbidden castles banished further down the line than forever.

You're never short of company, moths drawn to Ambrosia in return for your blessings. Surrounded by paper scraps, you squint through teary eyes at conundrums in formulae which somehow make more sense to you than life and death and justice and other things you'd thought you'd taught yourself to believe in. You picture him with a frown, puzzling over such inane tools of the trade like compasses and set squares which he no doubt would fling with a flick of his wrist to the floor and declare the laws of mathematicians inept and unjust.

You stop yourself when you realize Ishida-kun's been asking if you're all right at all since he's heard you talking to Nobody in study hall. That's what you call him: Nobody. Nobody made you cry today, Nobody's calling you when you look behind you, Nobody seems to understand and enjoy what this is doing to you.

There are better days ahead, sometimes when the rain stops and you can go out to play, a basket of sandwiches Nobody would like tucked under your arm. So when you're laughing along with the rest and sipping the best lemonade Tatsuki could conjure at such short notice, you know that he's still the same somehow. Succinct, silent, solitary specter draped in mourning colors.

When it does get better, you'll learn to walk again, a baby step at a time until you're sure you can run away.

Fly, perhaps.

Sometimes, you find yourself stealing a glance at the one who once had you in his orbit, wondering how you did it, how high you had yourself suspended for so long before the fall. You could try again, you question yourself and his hand once had felt so warm beneath yours, even in sleep, the closest to death. Warm, hot warm, hot warm and not cold and absent like your friend the Espada. But ashes are ashes and Kurosaki-kun's already burnt out from love he's taken for granted until Rukia's last goodbye.

You're only grateful that you can hold a hand to your heart and find it's not broken for this very reason.

Often, you twist and turn in bed as you look for signs of deception in the shadows. You don't want to but you 'can't help it' and then you fall asleep, ashamed at your worth or lack of it. You twist and turn through the dreams you see, twist the jade green leaves to eyes and white snow to skin.

He stands before you, a mannequin in winter.

* * *

She's imperceptible, ignorable, imaginary and she's breathing your breath in puffs of clouds.

She's a stanza you write in tepid verse.

She lives in your words, the place where they all gather to fester in that hole.

You lie to yourself, lie down next to her and collect the pieces of her in your arms as they form from dust around her. She's an expendable creature – humans always were – and you will make sure she has the best of your time. For now.

Lips part, she struggles with your name on her tongue but comes up short.

You watch.

Her eyes are wide open now, drinking all of you in fluttering blinking tears. Stupid girl, she thought you'd be long gone.

Dust in the wind.

"Ul…"

You press a finger over her mouth, silencing her with the pad of your thumb dabbing away the crying. She's grown older and wiser than she was with you and you've figured out that _this_ is what it's about. Back then, she spoke to you in rhyme and you answered with reason. A spade for a heart. You can hear her response thrumming like a pair of wings in her chest.

You know you won't sleep well tonight.

The sound of her dreams is a strange thing. Soft, vibrant and awake with hope.

* * *

She wakes up in the morning and finds the space next to her empty.

"I am here." He speaks quietly.

In the light, she can see the rise of his spine beneath the skin of his back facing her from his place at the window. When he turns, his chest contracts and a breath fills in the silence.

"Welcome home, Ulquiorra."

He says nothing but she smiles when she sees his hand leave the place over his heart, the questioning void of a hole now full and complete.


End file.
